$11: How do you play this on the river?

[mcpherzen]

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I'm curious why no one recommends a raise. It is not likely there is a 88-TT, and if you opponents have brains, there will be no Jx, or overpair. If you make a small reraise, it is more likely that the raiser and caller will call than it is that the other two yet to act will call the 80. Call 80, reraise 80-100.

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You're right...it is highly likely that you have the best hand here, so raising with it makes a lot of sense. It is an awfully tough bet for your opponents to call however. Especially coming from the blind on the river. I do agree that at least the river bettor will likely call a min-raise, so your play is unlikely to be -EV (it would be -EV if you never got called but always got raised by quad Jacks).

However, I would still just call here, personally. I want to close the betting as quickly as possible and show down my very good hand. By raising, you definitely expose yourself to the river bettor, who might just decide to play "who's got the Jack?" with you and pop you with a huge re-raise. You almost certainly can't call that, so I'd prefer to not even jump into a situation where I could allow my opponent to outplay me.

If I call and win this pot, I add 30% ($250) to my stack on the very first hand and exposed myself to no further risk. I think to be successful at sng's, you need to be very comfortable with adding 20%-40% to your stack in pots at the early levels, as opposed to taking more chances in the attempt to double-up early. If you are a solid sng'er, having T1050 on hand #2 when all your opponents have T800 or less should have a noticeable positive infuence on your ITM and ROI figures.

--Zen